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Saturday, December 23, 2006

An AFP story carried locally by The New Zealand Herald, reports that the US religious right is all in a froth because Keith Ellison, a Muslim congressman-elect, plans on having a private swearing-in ceremony using the Koran. It will take place after the collective ceremony on January 4.

The story quotes a Republican Congressman called Virgil Goode who says stricter immigration rules are needed or else:

“…there will likely be many more Muslims elected to office and demanding the use of the Koran …eroding the country's traditional values.”

There you have it: America’s “traditional values” are finally proven to be exclusively Christian. You would think that the Goode congressman would want to form an alliance with fundamentalist Muslims, with whom he would agree pretty much all the time on social issues.

Yet Ellison is no fundamentalist, and that may be the real cause of Goode’s foaming and frothing. Ellison summed it up my feelings on the subject when he said:

“I think we need to not focus on what religious text any Congress member might want to use. Let's focus on the text that binds us together. That's the Constitution.”